This week, I held a talk with students of the Architecture Department of Tel Aviv University. The topic of their senior thesis (requested by the university) is “Designing the International Kabbalah Center,” which needs to include all of our numerous services, centers of communication, broadcast center, classrooms, auditoriums, television and radio studios, offices for the creation and editing of our materials, center of Kabbalah dissemination, conference halls, centers for women and children, utility rooms, etc.

A group of nearly thirty students will be working on this project together. For the first time in the university’s history, students are given not individual assignments, but are required to work together on creating a World Spiritual Center. Thus, it was decided that the students are to work on this project together, as a group, and each student will receive credit for his or her mutual work just as if s/he had done it individually.

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A question I received: Kabbalah says that we are governed by the Upper Force. In this case, how should I relate to raising my children? How can I raise them when they and I are controlled from above? Children aren’t something inanimate, like a traffic light or a computer, so how should I raise them?

My Answer: In one way or another, children live in a society or environment from which they receive all “the good and the bad.” Nature has given you the responsibility to raise them, to determine what will fill them during their initial ten to fifteen years of their life. In other words, you are “molding” them, and you also determine what educational institutions they attend and who their teachers and friends are.

A question I received: How soon will a Kabbalistic elementary school be established? I am afraid of sending my children to a regular school or day care.

My Answer: We already have such schools, to some extent. And you can try creating them in other places as well.

A question I received: Is it possible to visit your center in Israel with children?

My Answer: Yes. You need to coordinate your visit with our reception by calling 1-700-509-209.

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A question I received: Within the course of ten years leading up to year 2002, the use of antidepressants in Great Britain increased by 234%. The U.S. independent report of 2005 announced that 11% of women and 5% of men who are not undergoing official treatment (in the year 2002) take antidepressants. What effect do antidepressants have on a person’s spiritual development? Can a student advance in Kabbalah if he’s on antidepressants?

My Answer: Antidepressants are definitely one of today’s leading drugs. Not only do we prescribe them to children, we prescribe them to animals as well. Egoism is incapable of being fulfilled in our world, and at the same time, it hasn’t yet realized its fulfillment in the Upper World. As a result, egoism remains in a sort of intermediate state between the two worlds. Egoism’s growth will lead one to the discovery of Kabbalah as a method of fulfillment, but in the meantime – suffering!

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A question I received in response to an Israeli news post “8% of Teenagers in Israel Have Tried to Commit Suicide“: A recent study shows that approximately 8% of teenagers in Israel have at some point tried to commit suicide. This is a plea for help. We need to listen to our teenagers and be mindful of their concerns.

My Answer: It’s not the teenagers who have a plea for help. It’s their inner emptiness, the Reshimo that is crying out for fulfillment. Thus, we should give them the method capable of fulfilling this Reshimo: Kabbalah. My children never went through any such states. We raised them within Bnei Baruch’s framework, by teaching them Kabbalah’s basic concepts, and none of them (in all possible age groups, from 2 to 20 and up) have ever shown such problems.

Related Material:
Article: Education
Article: Raising the Next Generation of Children
Blog Post & Video: How Do We Renew and Improve Education: The Hot Question in Bnei Baruch

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1. Globalization has become a key factor in the world’s economic, political and cultural development. It incorporates the international market, all the social processes, and the lives of each and every one of us. However, it doesn’t solve any political, economical, social, cultural or religious problems.

2. A new kind of education is needed to reconcile us with this new reality. In the past, education was structured within the boundaries of an egoistic and disconnected world. New education should take place naturally, rather than through Nature’s painful influence. One way or another, Nature will force us to change – to change our way of thinking and to make our relationships truly global. But unlike previous transformations, we don’t have to undergo the current transformation by force. For the very first time, we can do it ourselves, consciously.

3. The common culture should not be replaced with a global culture forcefully, like how we usually do things. For instance, today we are forcing our children to study by old methods, even though they are ready for “the new humanity.” We instinctively strive to suppress everything new, while they naturally strive toward it.

4. For the first time in history, mass media must assume an educational role. Instead of being a dubious source of information, mass media needs to earn our trust by contributing to the education of the new generation. Mass media should initiate the change, and later, educational institutions will follow. This is because all social changes need to begin from “below,” in other words, they should touch people’s lives, morals and cultural-religious traditions. The new should not replace the old by force, but naturally, by revealing the globality of nature and society. Then the new will replace the old painlessly.

5. Kabbalistic education is not coercive, because it does not strive to bring everyone to the same educational and cultural level. On the contrary, people can keep all possible levels and cultures, because Kabbalistic education raises people above their various cultures. Instead of making them collide, it unites them even more strongly due to such differences.

Therefore, Kabbalistic education prevents the clash of cultures, ideologies, and nations. As Baal HaSulam writes, everyone can remain in their religions.

6. Even though Kabbalah brings everyone to a single consciousness, bringing people together as cogwheels in a single mechanism, it doesn’t lessen anyone’s individual role. This is because it helps a person find his or her place in the mechanism, in the mutual connection of all people. Each one of us discovers the best possible state that Nature has prepared for us.

Kabbalistic education enables people to accept the same principles of existence in the world, so that one’s individual consciousness turns into collective consciousness, and later into the consciousness of one civilization. After that, as Baal HaSulam writes, the boundaries start disappearing and a single civilization emerges, in which the citizens are single-minded in their aspiration to unite with the Creator.

Parting with independence, the disappearance of boundaries and cultures, and the creation of a single spiritual authority should not happen coercively, but by realizing the need to unite with the Creator.

Mass education can happen through TV shows and internet games, and by prohibiting the glorification of egoistic fulfillment and forceful influence over the world.

7. Globalization evokes the sensation that the world is small. Yet the growing awareness of the single system of souls makes it a warm world, where we can all rely on one another.

Related Material:
My Article on Ynetnews – A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis
The Consumer Effect

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A question I received: Lately people in Israel are talking about combining traditions with children’s education. They want to bring the traditions and elements of Judaism into the general curriculum, but as the national culture, rather than religion.

Even secular parents, who weren’t taught to honor traditions as children, want their children to adopt these traditions, hoping that this will give them a different perspective on life and the world and prevent problems like drugs, alcoholism, depression and other diseases of our time. They hope that this will keep their children away from harm and make their lives safer.

My Answer: Kabbalah says that traditions can have a positive influence on people, as long as they are perceived as the nation’s cultural heritage and as long as they are kept for strengthening the family unit. However, in every other respect, people should live according to what Nature demands of them, according to its program of evolution.

According to Nature (or the plan of creation), man must understand Nature, discover how it is connected into a single, integral and perfect system, and consciously integrate himself into it as an integral, intelligent element.

In order to make us want to understand Nature and consciously integrate with it, Nature shows us our lack of harmony with it. We perceive such imbalance as all kinds of suffering, like wars, problems and distress. Gradually, we start realizing that all these problems are global and interconnected, and that they are all symptoms of one problem.

We then start understanding that maybe we’re the ones with the problem. This is what Nature is pushing us to understand, and not to uphold traditions. However, if traditions and other boundaries help us become corrected and fulfill Nature’s global plan, then of course, we should have them as well.

Concerning the plan you describe, of what the teachers and parents are hoping to do, I’m certain that it won’t work, because children have no such desire. Subconsciously, their desire is already directed at discovering the purpose of creation – the existence of the Creator. Our children are a completely different generation: They aren’t simply enormous egoists. Their desire for spirituality, called “the point in the heart,” is already being revealed. This desire is the embryo of the soul, and it is demanding its development. Previous generations did not have such giant egoism within their points in the heart.

Egoism has been evolving over thousands of years, demanding fulfillment from this world the whole time. However, today it isn’t the egoism that demands fulfillment, but the point in the heart, and this is why children no longer desire our world, but something else… something that’s still unclear. By acting the way we do, we imprison them; but to us, it seems like this is what’s best for them. Our generation does not have the time nor the place for these experiments. We need to immediately figure out what is going on, and then we will understand how we should raise our children!

Related Material:
* ARTICLE: Raising the Next Generation of Children
* ARTICLE: Education

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I would like to invite you all to share your ideas on creating new games for children!

The games should be aimed at showing children how we triumph when we connect with others, and as such, they should act as live examples of the greatness that lies in achieving the goal that Nature is urging us toward.

As well as showing children how we triumph when we connect with others, the games should also show how without such a connection, we fail. In short, the main principle that should be put across is that

• if you connect with others, you succeed, and
• if you don’t connect with others, you fail.

Moreover, in order to create such a connection, you need to slightly let go of yourself.

The critical point in the games should be when the child realizes that “I really don’t want to let go of myself, but if I can do it, then I win with everyone else.” Winning can only be together with everyone, and not alone. This is where the main artistry in creating these games lies.

I recommend that you watch the video clip below (from yesterday’s lesson) before sending your ideas, where I provide a broader explanation of this proposal.

(Note: Send your ideas in the comment form below.)

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Two questions I received on my post When Will People Recognize Kabbalah as a Science:

Question #1: Dear Rav Laitman, I made a search of your posts, and found no reference to chaos theory and fractal geometry. In my Kabbalah classes, here in Colorado Springs, and in my reading, Kabbalah and fractals are essentially synonomous. Such terms as “resemblance,” “similarity,” and “equivalence of form” are all applicable to fractals. I am wondering if you have considered this science, discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot in the 1970s, as a model and vehicle to explain Kabbalah?

My Answer: When I started studying Kabbalah in 1979, I ceased my serious scientific studies. Instead, I worked to provide for my family, and I gave everything else exclusively to my Kabbalah studies. My knowledge of other sciences is limited only to the extent necessary for clarifying Kabbalistic principles. If the science is genuine, i.e. if it’s based on practice and experiments, then it is always and in all ways similar to the science of Kabbalah.

Question #2: Do you think increasing availability of information instantly over the Internet and the advent of mobile devices such as the iPhone will increase interest in Kabbalah, and how do you perceive the future of human technology as a vehicle for attainment of the Upper Light?

My Answer: Everything in our world, technology included, is developing for only one purpose: to help humanity correct itself in the most optimal way, either through positive or negative influence, and come to equivalence of form with the Creator. Equivalence of form with the Creator is the purpose of creation. The very existence of our world, and everything developing in it, is only for this one purpose! For instance, thanks to the Internet, we can now study Kabbalah together from every distant corner of the planet, as if we are right next to each other.

A question I received on my post Hyperactive Children – the Result of Evolving Egoism: You talk about ‘Hyperactive’ children and mention the use of Ritalin. I would be interested to know your thoughts on severe ADHD and whether you have seen the actions of such a child without medication? The reason I ask, is that 3 members of my family have been diagnosed with ADHD, but one has it severely. I know there is no right answer here and each person is different to the next. With Ritalin, he can be a very loving and caring person, but without it, he can be suicidal and has come close several times to being sectioned.

My Answer: You’re speaking of an illness, and not the typical hyperactivity that stems from an increased egoism of the new generation, which contains sparks of spirituality, attracting them to discover the Upper World, and as such not letting them be at peace in this world. In your case, the children need proper medical care!

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Request for ML (from a comment to the post: Violence in Schools on the Rise): Dear Laitman, I think it would be great to add a commentary about how deeply depressed some humans are about living in the world today with some lines about how the future can bring joy and peace to them, especially to the young ones. Thanks Already.

My Response: These days, young people are more depressed than ever before. They see no purpose. They’ve exhausted their desires, having already developed through wealth, power, fame and knowledge, there is nothing left but sex and drugs. Sex will also gradually prove itself as being unfulfilling, and eventually they will even lose their desire for drugs – that’s how empty everything will feel!… And then we will hear the universal outcry of despair, when life will become worse than death, and yet, death will not be an option. This will immediately uncover the opportunity to achieve happiness, eternity and perfection in the qualities of love and giving. [Read more →]

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It’s obvious that there is something special about the children born today: they are especially egoistic, shrewd and intelligent. They want to know “why” they have to do something an adult tells them, and only then do they agree to it, i.e. if they agree at all (usually they don’t!) They’re a completely new generation, with no desire to “succeed” in life, i.e. in our understanding of the term. First they need to prove to themselves that life has meaning. Otherwise, isn’t it better to just escape into drugs, various pleasures, and their own virtual world, rather than put in all sorts of efforts? What’s the point anyway?

We can’t handle them. We can’t restrain their egoism, and we can’t answer their questions. For these reasons, adults use all the means at their disposal to try and tame the new generation – in particular, to tame their hyperactivity. Hyperactivity, however, only seems hyper to adults. It’s quite normal for the new generation.

Many children regularly have permanent damage inflicted upon them through the use of addictive medications, such as Ritalin. These medications cause up to 70 side effects, including suicidal impulses, psychoses and arrhythmia, which parents aren’t warned of beforehand. Such medications are registered as narcotic substances, and are therefore considered as being dangerous drugs. At any rate, the practice of teachers who force parents to prescribe their children with Ritalin, under the fear of their children being expelled from school, is unacceptable. (There is another opinion that Ritalin is not a drug, because it doesn’t cause “withdrawals,” meaning one does not become physically dependent on it.)

Parents themselves can no longer manage their children, and are ready for anything! For example, according to the New York Times, when New York State authorities decided to stop the use of electroshock therapy on problematic children, they were confronted by the parents who insisted that electroshock isn’t actually cruel, that it teaches children to behave.

Kabbalah tells us that we live in a unique transitional period of reevaluating our evolution. In Ancient Babylon, where our evolution began, we made a decision to evolve egoistically. This decision was in spite of Abraham’s advice, who called for humanity’s altruistic evolution. And so we started evolving egoistically, under the influence of egoistic forces. Today, we are discovering that we have come to a dead end. We realize that we have positioned ourselves against Nature (the Creator). Kabbalah, Abraham’s testament, is becoming revealed to the world as a method for a different kind of existence: one that is integral, filled with love, and in balance with Nature. Kabbalah tells us that suffering will force us to accept Abraham’s way of existence, but that we don’t need to suffer. We can change our civilization by recognizing the oncoming global crisis and putting the wisdom of Kabbalah to use.

Are we wise enough to make the right choice?

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